Tag Archives: Twentieth Century-Fox

Once one of the best-known action screenwriters in Hollywood, Steven E. De Souza (Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life) is planning to readapt Sheena: Queen Of The Jungle, the other well-known comic book created by the legendary Will Eisner (The Spirit), and thinks Jessica Alba (The Love Guru) would be a perfect fit for the role. Pretty much a female Tarzan, Sheena was already brought to the big screen in 1984 and also had several shows based on her adventures.

Also, 20th Century-Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman gave a little more insight into the planned Daredevil reboot. However, he seems to dislike calling it a reboot, so could it actually be a sequel? If so, hurray!

A Daredevil, to use your words, reboot, is something we are thinking very seriously about. I think that the thing the Hulk showed although, it did what it did, is that it is possible, that if you really do it right the audience will give you a second chance. That it is possible. And I think that you see that when they did Batman Begins, the first Nolan movie, that you can have made some mistakes along the way or movies that the audience wasn’t that crazy about and then given the proper amount of time and the right creative vision behind it, you can, to use your word, reboot. It needs a visionary at the level that Chris Nolan was. It needs someone, it needs a director, honestly, who has a genuine vision. What we wouldn’t do is just do it for the sake of doing it. Right? What we try to do is to get a creative engine for it, that really had a great vision for it, that’s what we would look for.

If they’re going the route of The Incredible Hulk, where it goes in a new direction but can still be considered a sequel to the first movie, then hell yeah, I’m all for it.

Avatar, the long-awaited return of director James Cameron more than ten years after Titanic (what is it with all these Titanic comebacks happening at once?) hasn’t even come out yet that 20th Century-Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman is already talking franchise possibilities. His reason? “It’s just a great story”.

Meanwhile, more the details have come out on the recently announced untitled continuation of George A. Romero’s infamous zombie saga:

Plot involves inhabitants of an isolated island off the North American coast who find their relatives rising from the dead to eat their kin. The leaders of the island feud over whether or not to kill their reanimated relatives or preserve them in hopes of finding a cure.

The film is currently shooting in Canada and stars a bunch of people you’ve probably never heard of.

Finally, rumors of a third installment in the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider franchise are swirling again due to the approaching release of the latest video game in the franchise, Tomb Raider: Underworld, and producers are apparently in talks to get Angelina Jolie (Wanted) back in the famous role. The only problem? Angelina isn’t, and never was right for the part of Lara Croft in my opinion.

I saw Babylon A.D. today, and while I won’t write a full review of it at this time, I do have a few things I want to say. Babylon A.D. has been a pet project for acclaimed French director Mathieu Kassovitz (Gothika) for many years, with him being a huge fan of Maurice Georges Dantec’s source novel Babylon Babies. The film had a very troubled shoot and was delayed from its original release date in early 2008. Ultimately, most people had already dismissed the film before it was released, and the final nail in its coffin was when both Kassovitz and lead actor Vin Diesel (Find Me Guilty) trashed the film before its American release. Here’s the catch though: they were talking about the Fox version of the film.

Yes, there are two versions of Babylon A.D., one which runs 90 minutes and is distributed by 20th Century-Fox in the US, Canada, UK and some other countries, and another by Studio Canal, which doesn’t mention Fox at all and lasts 11 minutes more. Now this doesn’t mean that Fox simply cut out 11 minutes from the film and released it…they actually cut out much more, and replaced it with footage that isn’t in the longer version. I haven’t seen the Fox version, but I’ve read about it and can thus tell you that Fox basically removed significant parts of plot development and replaced them with action scenes that are completely absent from the Studio Canal version… Fox changed the beginning, Fox changed the ending, Fox changed the dialogues, Fox changed everything.

With X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the X-Men prequel, to be released by next May, and X-Men Origins: Magneto (another prequel) to follow soon after, 20th Century-Fox have decided they have a gold mine and are planning at least two more spinoffs: a “Young X-Men” movie (Generation X?) and a film focusing on the high-tech mercenary Deadpool, whom Ryan Reynolds (Definitely, Maybe) plays in Wolverine. I say go for it, as long as you keep the films consistent with one another.

Additionally, Fox is considering a reboot of the Daredevil franchise, which spawned a 2003 film starring Ben Affleck (Hollywoodland) as the titular hero and the 2005 spinoff clunker Elektra, and wall I can say is why? Why can’t we simply have a Daredevil 2? The first film isn’t anywhere near the failure most people seem to think it is. Exceeding its budget by 100 million dollars worldwide, it was well received by many, and even some people who hated it loved the director’s cut which adds 30 minutes to the film, including an entire subplot. Hell, I even know quite a few people who prefer it to Spider-Man! Why must there be a reboot? Blame Christopher Nolan. Not long ago, Jason Statham (Death Race) expressed interest in taking the role, with long time Daredevil writer Frank Miller’s support. I like Jason, but that’s just a bad choice.

After the first installments of Harry Potter and The Lord Of The Rings rocked the global box-office back in 2001, American movie studios started buying the rights of every fantasy book they could find in the hope of striking cinematic gold. Barely any executive was able to shout “cha-ching” however, as only a handful of these opportunist films have proved successful, namely Disney’s The Chronicles Of Narnia and New Line’s The Golden Compass (sure, it bombed in the US, but it was huge everywhere else). Indeed, in their rush to shell out movies about magical worlds, studios seem to have mostly forgotten what made Potter and Rings so successful: it’s not only an established fanbase and an otherworldly setting, but mainly faithfulness, and a creative team truly invested in the source material.

Which brings us to Eragon, which is adapted from the first book in Chistopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle. The movie was directed by first-timer Stefen Fangmeier, a visual effects supervisor on films such as A Series Of Unfortunate Events, and adpated to screenplay form by Peter Buchman (Jurassic Park III). It stars newcomer Edward Speleers in the title role, as well as Jeremy Irons (Kingdom Of Heaven), Sienna Guillory (Resident Evil: Apocalypse), Robert Carlyle (28 Weeks Later), John Malkovich (Beowulf), Garett Hedlund (Death Sentence), Djimon Hounsou (Never Back Down), Rachel Weisz’s voice (Definitely, Maybe) and pop singer Joss Stone in her first (albeit brief) film role.

Eragon‘s story goes pretty much like this: Once upon a time, peace was kept by an order of knights with special abilities. One of these knights turned to evil however, and betrayed his comrades, killing them all (or did he?) and establishing himself as ruler of everywhere. Years later, a young blond male living at his uncle’s farm stumbles upon something stolen from the evil lord. After his family is killed, he is recruited by a wise old ex-knight and sets on a journey to join a small band of dedicated rebels, to whom the stolen item could prove extremely useful. Along the way, they will venture into one of the enemy’s fortresses to rescue the young princess who stole the thing in the first place. Sound familiar? Review and trailer after the jump.

In what can only be labeled a bitch move, Warner Bros has filed a lawsuit against Indian production company Mirchi Movies regarding the forthcoming film Hari Puttar: A Comedy Of Terrors. The reason? Warner feels the movie is taking advantage of the Harry Potter name. WB spokeswoman Deborah Lincoln tells The Hollywood Reporter:

“We have recently commenced proceedings against parties involved in the production and distribution of a movie entitled ‘Hari Puttar’. Warner Bros. values and protects intellectual property rights. However, it is our policy not to discuss publicly the details of any ongoing litigation.”

Mirchi CEO Munish Purii retorded:

We registered the ‘Hari Puttar’ title in 2005 and it’s unfortunate that Warner has chosen to file a case so close to our film’s release. In my opinion, I don’t think our title has any similarity or links with ‘Harry Potter.’

The irony here? Mr Purii is actually the one who’s right. From the looks of Hari Puttar‘s trailer, the movie has nothing to do with the world’s most famous teenage wizard and is actually eerily similar to the Home Alone franchise, a property owned by Twentieth Century-Fox. So if anyone should file a lawsuit against Hari Puttar, it ought to be Fox, a company currently tangled with Warner in a messy battle over the Watchmen rights (god, it’s like a vicious circle).